Stephen Elbaz revealed mold behind the wall vinyl at a Brooklyn co-op.
By MIREYA NAVARRO Published: May 1, 2013
At the Beverly Hills co-op in Brooklyn, the wallpaper in the lobby is peeling by the yard. The walls themselves show cracks and holes, as if assaulted by a sledgehammer. The boiler is barely sputtering along and may not last the year.
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Uli Seit for The New York Times
The floor of a ground-floor kitchen, damaged by water from Hurricane Sandy.
Uli Seit for The New York Times
Josephine Scarnato is the co-op's secretary-treasurer. She criticized the federal disaster aid rules.
Over all, the 140-unit, seven-story building sustained more than $500,000 in damage from Hurricane Sandy. Even so, it cannot obtain federal aid for repairs.
Since the hurricane, thousands of homeowners have been startled to discover that co-ops are largely barred from federal disaster assistance. The rules have stirred growing criticism from members of Congress from the region, who contend that the system fails to take into account how people live in New York City, where co-ops have flourished.
The lawmakers are calling for the rules to be changed, saying that as severe weather becomes more common, the region will be increasingly shortchanged in disaster aid.
Under the longstanding policy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, co-ops are considered businesses, even though they are essentially nonprofit entities set up by property owners.
As a result, co-op boards are prohibited from obtaining grants for common areas, and individual co-op owners cannot seek money for damage to their apartments’ walls and floors because those are usually the legal responsibility of the building.
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